Medellin: Fans mourned Wednesday for a Brazilian football team decimated in a plane crash that killed 71 people in Colombia, as a recording emerged of the panicked pilot reporting he was out of fuel.

Chapecoense fans mourn the deaths of the victims of the plane crash. AP

Authorities are still investigating what caused the charter flight to crash in the mountains outside Medellin as it carried Cinderella-story team Chapecoense Real to a major match.

A haunting recording aired by Colombian media appeared to hold answers -- though officials have not confirmed its authenticity.

"Ma'am, LAMIA 2933 has a total failure, total electrical failure, without fuel," pilot Miguel Quiroga tells the control tower in the recording, minutes before the jet crashed Monday night.

In the tape, the pilot had earlier asked for priority to land due to "fuel problems."

The request was granted by Medellin's international airport.

But the control tower then lost contact with the plane, whose fuselage was found plastered on a hillside 50 kilometers (30 miles) outside the city.

The crash killed most of Chapecoense's squad and 20 journalists traveling with them to the finals of South America's second-largest club tournament.

The unsung Brazilian club was on the way to crowning a fairytale year in the Copa Sudamericana against Medellin side Atletico Nacional.

Announcing the crash on Monday night, the aviation authority said the plane had reported electrical problems.

But it may also have been out of fuel.

A Colombian military source told AFP: "It is very suspicious that despite the impact there was no explosion. That reinforces the theory of the lack of fuel."

The plane was scheduled to make a refueling stop in Bogota, but skipped the Colombian capital and headed straight for Medellin, reported Bolivian newspaper Pagina Siete, citing a representative of the airline.

"The pilot was the one who made the decision," Gustavo Vargas of Bolivian charter company LAMIA told the newspaper.

"He thought the fuel would last."

Black boxes

Colombia's civil aviation authority said it hoped to establish the cause of the crash "as soon as possible."

British and Brazilian investigators headed to Colombia to help with the probe, authorities said.

Investigators have recovered the black boxes from the British Aerospace 146 plane.